The use of a thin-client/server environment is becoming increasingly popular since it provides, among other things, lower cost in relation to the common personal computer alternative. Nonetheless, a thin-client necessitates a computing apparatus of suitable computing power located at a work station, in addition to associated display and input devices. In general, a thin client provides convenient access to media for collaboration in a work environment except that of voice collaboration. While a “softphone” can also be supplied using a thin client, along with associated earphone jacks and voice circuitry, such arrangements have not found great favour as it is up to a user to ensure that the application is running at all times and that it is sufficiently in the foreground of a display device to originate calls and provide adequate alerts to incoming calls, etc. This is made worse during collaboration in that the softphone application will inevitably be sent to the background as documents etc. are consulted. Indeed, a benefit of modern collaboration and telephone feature software is that pertinent information may be had at a glance thus preventing distraction from current activities. For example, caller id provides the identity of a caller and, hence the relevance of an incoming call can be quickly ascertained. Further to this, buddy lists provide a quick indication of the availability of potential collaborators; a softphone, which can be sent to the background or clutter the foreground of a display, does not lend itself to such affordances.
Hence, for these and other reasons, it is common to provide a conventional IP or analog telephone set in addition to the thin client device and associated display and data entry devices such that a telephone set is always active and physically accessible, with dedicated displays and keys etc. However providing both a thin client device and a telephone set can be problematic in collaboration applications because the telephone set and thin client must be associated with each other so that applications can interact properly. The creation of this association can be a costly and error prone management task.